Unfortunately for offensive linemen, those powerful hands and that arduous work ethic led Dean to football. Dean used his muscled upper torso at defensive end to fling aside bigger blockers and deck quarterbacks for 11 seasons in the National Football League. Undersized at 6-foot-3, 230 pounds, he also used his quickness to run past linemen and flatten passers for the San Diego Chargers and San Francisco 49ers.

The QBs often landed on their backsides. On Saturday, Dean lands in the Pro Football Hall of Fame as part of the Class of 2008.

“When it came to pass-rush off the corner, nobody was faster or quicker than Fred Dean,” San Diego Hall of Fame receiver Charlie Joiner said of his former teammate. “He was also tremendously strong. If he weighed 225, his upper body was 210.”

By the time he retired in 1986, Dean had revamped the role of pass rusher. His unofficial career sack total of 93 doesn’t scratch the surface of Dean’s overall impact. The term “pass rush specialist” had been in use for years, but Dean helped define it.

“When he was at San Diego, they flopped him side to side,” former Green Bay General Manager Ron Wolf said. “Ted Hendricks, Lawrence Taylor, they moved around, too. But I think Dean was the first.”

“When we played, we had to make sure to account for Dean on every play. And you had to hurry up and get players on the field to block him.”

Eighteen years after becoming eligible, Dean finally was tabbed by the Hall of Fame’s selection committee.

“I’m just surprised he wasn’t a Hall of Famer sooner,” said former 49ers defensive end and current Seattle defensive line coach Dwaine Board. “I mean, he’s a guy who changed the game.

“There aren’t any Fred Deans today.”

A lineman first

Forget the Hall of Fame. Dean almost didn’t make it through his first training camp.

He was San Diego’s fourth pick in the 1975 draft, a second-round choice out of Louisiana Tech, the 33rd overall selection. Second-year Chargers coach Tommy Prothro liked Dean’s speed off the edge and projected him as a linebacker.

“He’ll be the fastest linebacker in football because he runs a 4.55 40,” Prothro said at the time.

But Dean would rather have driven a truck than play linebacker.

“They made good money, and your body didn’t get beat up,” Dean said of truck drivers.
Dean was a four-year All-Southland Conference defensive lineman, primarily at end. The league Defensive Player of the Year as a sophomore and senior, he was a three-time All-American who led Louisiana Tech to the Division II national championship in 1973.

“My thing was I loved going from the down position,” Dean said. “A four-point stance. That’s where I was comfortable.

“I played linebacker in the East-West Shrine Game and the Senior Bowl, and I did well. But I felt out of place. Then Coach Prothro puts me at linebacker. I told him I didn’t want to play linebacker. I wanted to played defensive line.

“I guess ... he thought he was going to teach me a lesson.”

Dean did a spin move on Prothro’s decision.

“That practice, against those linemen, in a four-point stance, Coach Prothro saw the kind of whuppin’ a rookie put on those (offensive) linemen,” Dean said. “Dick Coury, the linebackers coach, he said, ‘Put him down at whatever position he wants.’ ... I’ve been a lineman ever since.”

Coury has no problem admitting the coaching staff’s mistake.

“He was a defensive end, and one of the best in history,” Coury said. “He was just a natural.”

Speed, strength keys

There was never a doubt about Dean’s quickness. Coupled with his strength, he was overpowering in high school and college.

But in the NFL, behemoths such as the Rams’ Jackie Slater (6-4, 277) and the Bengals’ Anthony Muñoz (6-6, 278) were there every Sunday.

Nothing changed. Dean still dropped the hammer.

“He was the strongest opponent I ever faced,” Muñoz, the Bengals Hall of Fame tackle, said of their Super Bowl XVI battle in January 1982 when the San Francisco won its first title at Cincinnati’s expense.

“I played at 215 in college,” Dean said. “I was really lean. But I had great upper body strength from pulling all the wood. I used that to keep people off me. A lot of people in the (NFL) didn’t think I was very strong because of my size. That was an advantage to me. I was just as strong as anyone in the league. That’s what they didn’t understand. There were linemen who licked their chops — they would be really surprised later.”

Like when Dean bolted by them. Try as they might to chip him to keep the QB upright, Dean was able to slip or escape blocks altogether.

“He was never big. But he was extremely quick,” 49ers defensive coach Chuck Studley said. “He always lined up extremely wide of the tackle. If he made one bad move, Fred took advantage of it and made them pay.”

Those who thought Dean didn’t work at his craft were wrong. Fear of failure drove him to excel. Ultra-shy, an introvert who wrote poetry, Dean preferred Louisiana to team facilities to hone his craft.

“What I did was work in the offseason at home to perfect my techniques,” Dean said. “I’d work with roly-poly dummies, just to get them to try to block me. To even touch me. People too. 49ers coach Dick McPherson saw that.”

He’d use martial arts for hand technique, hand-fighting and hand-speed.

“It all helped,” Dean said.

Dean also knew how to use his long arms to gain leverage over larger foes. He used all his attributes, Chargers Hall of Fame quarterback Dan Fouts said.

“He was very fast, with great strength,” Fouts said. “He had long arms and desire. He was ‘Mean’ Fred Dean. It’s for real.

“He had that name when he got here — and he didn’t do anything to dispel it.”

The Dean difference

What mattered most to Dean was winning.

Louisiana Tech was 44-4 and won a small-college championship in Dean’s years there. By his fifth season in San Diego, the Chargers were AFC West Division champions and would win three straight West crowns.

Dean added two Super Bowl rings with San Francisco after arriving in 1981.

Hall of Fame head coach Bill Walsh, 8-24 in his first two seasons in San Francisco, was searching for lightning in a bottle when he hit on Dean in a midseason trade.

“We couldn’t find a reason why San Diego wanted to get rid of him,” Studley said. “From my experience it was the best (in-season) trade ever.”

In his first game as a 49er, Dean battered Dallas quarterback Danny White. On only three practices, Dean had three sacks, two hurries and two knockdowns as San Francisco won, 45-14.

“When I got there, coach Bill Walsh told me I’d be a pass rush specialist. Coach Walsh told me I’d play only about 12 plays, if that. Well, I played the whole game. I questioned Coach about that, and he laughed.”

The joke was on everybody else. San Francisco lost just one game that year after Dean’s arrival and defeated Cincinnati, 26-21, in the Super Bowl.

In 1983, he tied the NFL mark for sacks in a game with six and recorded a career-best 17 1/2 sacks. A year later, the 49ers compiled an 18-1 season and won their second Super Bowl in beating Dan Marino’s Dolphins, 38-16.

Dean’s 49ers role was simple from the start: Demolish quarterbacks.

“We rely on Fred to cause any number of things,” Walsh told the Orlando Sentinel in 1984. “One, he can sack the quarterback. Two, he can hit the QB and cause a fumble. Three, he can force the quarterback into ... an interception or at least an incompletion.”
The move eventually meant Dean didn’t play every down.

“I didn’t really want to do it at first,” Dean said. “But the more I thought about, the more I liked it. It extended my career.”

Great start, greater later

Dean became great right away in San Diego, but San Francisco made him a champion.

“I always saw room for improvement from my first year on,” Dean said of San Diego’s 2-12 finish his rookie year. “The second game, I became a starter at end. I had seven sacks that season, and it sure seemed like more. But to me, I never put much emphasis on it anyway. San Diego was more of a read-and-react defense. You played the run first, then rushed the quarterback.”

Dean might be the only Hall of Fame defender who had his career high in tackles (93) as a rookie. In 1978, Dean had 15 1/2 sacks but just 64 total tackles.

Dean already had discovered his quickness could bury a quarterback’s head in the turf.

“He really disrupted quarterbacks’ timing,” Joiner said. “They knew in the back of their minds that he would be coming from the blind side.

“There was no dog in him. When he was in the game, Dean went 100 percent on every play.”

Joiner and fellow Hall of Famer Kellen Winslow often would stop between drills to watch Dean work.

“Here’s how much we thought of Fred,” Winslow said. “Whenever the receivers were through with their plays, they would stand on the sidelines and watch Fred operate. They didn’t want to miss anything he was doing.”

In 1979, Dean made the first of his four Pro Bowls. A year later, he was All-Pro and the NFL Players Association’s AFC Defensive Player of the Year.

Just like a Dean rush, things changed in a blink. He held out for 58 days for more money in 1980. That led Chargers owner Gene Klein to trade him to San Francisco for two draft picks during the season.

It just the start of greater things for Dean, named to the NFL’s Team of the 1980s. Dean became the first player in history to earn the NFLPA’s Defensive Player of the Year in both conferences. He won it again in 1981, when he had 12 sacks in 11 games for the 49ers.

“We were a young team with talent. He was a veteran coming in,” Board said. “He just changed our attitude. He brought his presence onto the field. ... He was a guy who took us to another level.”

San Diego was left with “what if?”

“I can’t say how much it affected us, because we did make it to the AFC championship game,” said former Chargers defensive tackle Gary Johnson, who joined Dean in San Francisco in 1984 when the 49ers won another ring. “But I could say if we had more pass rush from the corner it might’ve been different.”

Pushing holdout to end

Like that other famous Dean — movie star James — Fred Dean was a rebel until the end. In addition to his holdout in 1980, he stared down Walsh and San Francisco owner Eddie DeBartolo in the 1984 Super Bowl season.

Dean sat, and San Francisco won without him. The 49ers kept winning, going 10-1 into November, and Dean was on the verge of being ineligible for postseason play.

“I just said if I can’t play this year, I’ll wait till next year,” Dean said of his deadline. “That night my lawyer called and told me it was done. They didn’t know what condition I’d be in. But when I got there, I was ready to go.”

The 49ers had not scored a defensive touchdown in Dean’s absence and averaged less than three sacks a game. Upon Dean’s arrival, the defense scored three touchdowns in four games, and the Niners averaged 6.2 sacks a game in the playoffs.

Headaches — football-induced, according to Dean — forced him out of the game before the 1986 season. He went into the auto parts business, but troubles with the IRS combined with health issues in the 1990s forced Dean to sell both his Super Bowl rings and rethink his life.

“Now I’m delivering the message. The true message,” said Dean, who became an ordained minister. “It wasn’t my decision. I remember sitting in the pews at church thinking, ‘I could never do that.’

“But Christmas Day 2003, I was in the hospital. My (blood) sugar level was 900. I was almost comatose. I’m diabetic. My wife said I was cracking jokes. But I was thinking, I’ve got to have a talk with the Lord about this. I had to accept that I was not in control. He accorded me a second chance. Now I say never say never.

“I thank the Lord for every day. A lot of what I have to say on that podium (Saturday) in Canton is because of him.”